IVY Rooftop, recently named Critics Choice “Best Nightclub 2011” by the San Antonio Express News, is San Antonio’s first rooftop bar. We opened our doors on Dec. 5, 2009. Since our opening, one of our main goals has been to bring a different caliber of nightlife to San Antonio. Just like any bar/night club, we have done many different styles of promotions. Some catch and some don’t. One of our slowest nights was Wednesday. Obviously, being a trendy upscale lounge, most people don’t go out to places like that in the middle of the week. So I sat down and did some brainstorming. One thing I am passionate about, like I said, was bringing great and unique music to my crowd. With the recent revolution in the EDM scene with dubstep and electro, we decided to try and capitalize on that.

My club has always been 21 and older, but since we wanted to bring this great music to as many people as possible and to fill the club on such a dead night we decided to go 18 and up just on Wednesdays. We started out wanting to just do a monthly, bringing in good DJs and start building the scene. We started LIFTED Wednesdays the beginning of May this year. We assembled some of Texas’s best underground dubstep, electro and DnB DJ/producers and started to promote the night with word of mouth and our 9,000 fans on Facebook. Our first Wednesday did so well, we decided to make it a weekly.

Headlining our LIFTED Wednesday’s, a 20-year-old DJ/producer out of Boerne, Texas, named Crizzly. Crizzly, who I also am nominating for best resident DJ, is an up and comer and is causing waves all across the nation. He has spun at every major Insomniac festival, been on tour with Figure, Bare, Run DMT, DallasK, Evol Intent, etc. He has opened for Deadmau5, Skrillex, Rusko, Nero, Excision, etc. Crizzly even took a sample from an old Wu Tang track and produced a “theme song” aptly named “LIFTED." Over the course of the summer, LIFTED grew each week gaining more and more popularity. From a night where we were only ringing a couple hundred dollars to now over $15,000 every week, it has grown into the place to be, not just in San Antonio, but all over Texas.

We are live on Hypersonic radio in Austin, Texas, every Wednesday, and we have organized a party bus that brings 40-50 people from Austin and San Marcos, Texas, every week. Since we have gained so much popularity and recognition, Insomniac Texas has now jumped on board to book headliners for LIFTED. Our next two months include MRK1, Bare, Ajapai, Vaski, Dieselboy, and Downlink. We also understand that yes, the music is key, but the atmosphere and energy also contribute to the success of the night. I have added a two watt full color laser, an assortment of LED club lighting, bubble and fog machines, two six-foot inflatable color changing stars outside on the roof, a C02 “cryo gun” and more bass inside and out just for Wednesday nights. We also hand out 500 free glow sticks and LED foam sticks to get the energy up and get the crowd excited and dancing. We try and keep it fresh and unique and one step ahead of our competition. Since our Wednesday nights have caught so much attention and have been so successful, almost every major nightclub on the north side of San Antonio has now opened on Wednesdays and is playing dubstep and electro.

This has not slowed us down one bit. We take pride in bringing the best quality EDM to our crowd with some of the best DJs in this genre of music not just in the state, but the world. Twisted Individual, Terrabad, AFK, Mad Classy, Bro Safari, Mayhem, Risk One, Digiraatii, and Heroes and Villans have all headlined a LIFTED for us. We have had several celebrities come and party with us, including Ricardo Chavira and Eva Longoria from "Desperate Housewives," Tony Parker, George Hill, Matt Boner and Richard Jefferson from the San Antonio Spurs. We have private cabanas on the rooftop for bottle service surrounding our 22-foot artificial Banyan tree in the middle of the roof. IVY also nominated for “Project of the year under $5 million” by the American Subcontractors Association for my unique and original design. We try and provide an unparalleled quality of service to not just our bottle service customers but to the regular patron as well. I have seven well-trained bartenders, three cocktail waitresses and a shot girl all working hard to serve the 500+ people that come to LIFTED every week.